Stolen Goods Markets

Guide No. 57 (2010)

The Problem of Stolen Goods Markets

What This Guide Does and Does Not Cover

This guide addresses the problem of stolen goods markets. The
guide begins by describing the problem, then provides advice on how best to
analyze local, national, or international stolen goods markets; reviews tactics
that you can use to detect those involved in stealing, dealing, and using
stolen goods; and suggests ways to assess the tactics' likely effectiveness in
specific situations and locations. The ultimate aim of reducing stolen goods
markets is to make it more difficult and risky for people to trade in stolen
goods and thereby discourage stealing in the first place.

Most burglars and other prolific thieves steal to raise
money, and to do so they need to sell whatever they steal. To obtain money by
stealing things, the prolific and relatively "successful" thief must routinely
complete two objectives without getting caught. The first objective is to
steal valuable items. The second objective is to sell or trade the
stolen goods. Ultimately, the prolific thief's main aim is to acquire something
else—often drugs or alcohol—with the money gained from selling the stolen
goods. While police and prosecutors commonly think of this scenario as
comprising two crimes—one being theft and the other receiving stolen goods—from
the thieves' standpoint, they haven't completed the action until they've
acquired what they ultimately desire. Understood this way, the theft is only
the beginning of the crime, not the end of it.1 While other theft-related problem-oriented guides address thwarting the thief's
first objective, this guide addresses the second objective.

Those who knowingly buy stolen goods do not have recourse to
legal remedies and so serious violence may be used as a means of criminal
dispute resolution.2
Stolen goods markets are but one aspect of the larger set of problems related
to property theft and illicit markets. This guide is limited to addressing the
particular harms stolen goods markets create, with a focus on ordinary consumer
goods. Some specialty stolen goods markets, such as those dealing in firearms, cultural
artifacts, art, or endangered species, have unique features calling for
separate analyses and different responses. Related problems not directly
addressed in this guide, each of which requires a separate analysis, include
the following:

Property theft problems

burglary

robbery

general theft

Market-related problems

illicit drugs markets

prostitution markets

human trafficking markets

child pornography markets

pirated software, music, and film media markets

fake goods markets

illicit diamond markets

endangered species markets

illicit antiques, art, and cultural artifacts markets

illicit firearms markets

Some of these related problems are covered in other guides
in this series, all of which are listed at the end of this guide. For the most
up-to-date listing of current and future guides, see www.popcenter.org.

This guide is designed to help police officers and other
officials reduce varied theft problems with different resource levels and in
various locations by promoting tailor-made solutions to specific local problems.

General Description of the Problem

Stolen goods markets facilitate the demand that drives much
property theft. Even though stolen goods dealers and consumers create the
demand for stolen goods, police and crime reduction efforts remain firmly focused
on thieves.3
Police agencies close many property crime investigations once they arrest the
thieves, and pay less attention to tracking the stolen property.4

Many stolen goods markets are so clandestine, they are harder
to research and police than drug trafficking, theft, and violence, for instance.5
However, much stolen goods trading goes on in relatively plain view, such as where
goods are hawked openly on the streets or in pawn- and secondhand shops. At
least some stolen goods markets are clearly visible, so long as you know what you
are looking for and understand the criminal dynamics of what you see.6

Gathering sufficient evidence to prosecute the stolen goods
middleman—the fence—is difficult as fences often hide their illegitimate
activities behind legitimate business fronts. Professional fences know how to
do this well and can operate for years with impunity.7

Harms Caused by Stolen Goods Markets

Stolen goods markets cause a number of social harms. Some
local stolen goods markets are linked to larger and more sophisticated organized
criminal enterprises. Those who buy in stolen goods markets create a demand for
their own victimization and also fuel the victimization of others. And since theft
is not evenly distributed, legitimate merchants and residents in high-crime
areas are either refused theft insurance or else pay considerably higher
premiums. The price of goods in shops reflects profits lost to thieves and
stolen goods markets, and merchants who refuse to trade in stolen goods are
often undercut and lose business to those who do. Meanwhile, the consequent
fear of crime creates uncertainty and discourages business investment,
population stability, and growth necessary for local economies to thrive.8 Finally, because those involved in stolen goods markets tend not to resort to the law to resolve their disputes, for fear of being found out themselves, they
often resort to violence to resolve them.9

Factors Contributing to Stolen Goods Markets

Understanding the factors that contribute to your problem
will help you frame your own local analysis questions, determine good
effectiveness measures, recognize key intervention points, and select
appropriate responses.

Transactions

Stolen goods trading typically involves several steps,
beginning with the theft itself and culminating in an end-consumer's obtaining
the stolen goods. Understanding the actions offenders take and challenges they face
in each step will help you design methods to disrupt the process at several
points in the crime process. Figure 1 depicts these steps.

Supply and Demand—The Key Issue in Most Thefts

As with any market, the relationship
between supply and demand for stolen goods can be complex. Generally, the demand for stolen goods increases the incidence of theft.† This makes sense
because, for the most part, thieves won't steal goods unless they first know or
believe other people will buy or trade for them.10 General awareness that
many business owners and members of the wider public are willing to buy stolen
goods motivates thieves to start and continue stealing.11 Young thieves learn
from their families, neighbors, and peers about their community's willingness
to buy stolen goods. Knowing who buys stolen goods and how to deal with them
makes stealing a viable choice for some young people growing up in less wealthy
areas.12

† The supply-and-demand relationship
is not always this simple. The relationship between people's willingness to buy stolen goods and others' readiness to steal them is sometimes complex (Ferman, Henry, and Hoyman, 1987).

Once thieves know people are generally willing
to buy stolen goods, stolen goods markets are mainly fuelled by thieves'
offering goods for sale, rather than by proactive demand from dealers or
consumers.13
Thieves' offers to sell stolen goods have the greatest influence on how stolen
goods markets operate. This is because most dealers and consumers do not
actively seek out stolen goods: someone needs to offer these items to them.14 Strangers frequently
offer small-business owners stolen goods.15

Sometimes thieves steal items to order.
This means they are asked to supply particular products or quantities by theft.
Prolific fences tend to encourage thieves to increase their offending in this
way. But stealing to order is not as common as stealing to offer.16

Commonly Stolen and Sold Goods

Knowledge of the "standing demand" for
stolen goods affects the type of goods stolen, depending on what is most in
demand at the time, and can at times lead to problem crime waves when thieves
target particular highly sought items. Statistical research proves that most thieves
have an ever-changing hierarchy of goods that they prefer to steal. Research
with thieves themselves reveals that they rarely hoard stolen goods for more
than an hour or two, at most, since they seek as near to immediate cash returns
as possible—and want to avoid getting caught in possession.17 This means that
thieves are unlikely to steal and hoard goods that they do not currently know
to be in high demand on the off chance that they will be saleable in the
future. Since most thieves steal because they want money in a hurry, at the top
of their list is cash, followed by items that they can easily and quickly sell for
relatively high prices, such as jewelry and high-tech home entertainment
equipment.18

Understanding what makes products attractive to thieves will
help you anticipate new theft targets, and consequently what new products are
likely to become popular in stolen goods markets.19
So-called hot products typically have one or more of the following
attributes that can be summarized by the acronym CRAVED, in that they are the
following:

The more of these attributes a thing has, the more attractive
it is for someone to steal it. However, because we know that prolific thieves
rarely steal items for their own use, the last three attributes are the most
important because they relate to items' worth and not just to their
portability. It is this worth of items that makes them disposable as
products that thieves can sell or swap for drugs.

The demand for and prices of goods in legitimate markets
influences what products are hot in stolen goods markets.21
Knowing, for example, what retail goods shoplifters are stealing, while perhaps
not too important to police from a criminal investigation standpoint, might be
quite important from a crime prevention standpoint, because shoplifting is
often a gateway crime to more-serious theft and a fallback crime for prolific
burglars to support their drug use.22

Stolen Goods Market Locations and Times

Although theft can occur any place where there is something
to steal, much burglary and other theft are concentrated in particular areas,
and thieves prey more often upon particular types of people in those areas.23
Likewise, in both the United Kingdom and the United States, stolen goods markets
can occur anywhere. But once again, they tend to be concentrated in the least
affluent areas.24
Accordingly, stolen goods markets are one of the major contributing factors to
criminal victimization in less-affluent areas, since thieves prefer not to
travel far when selling stolen goods.

Thieves generally prefer to sell stolen goods locally,25
and they sell most stolen goods within 30 minutes of their theft.26
Therefore, a concentration of local thefts might (but not necessarily) indicate
the relatively close proximity of a local market for those goods. It must be
noted, however, that while this is something worth exploring in the first
instance, it should not be done at the expense of neglecting other possibly
more important markets farther afield.

Stolen goods trading takes place at odd times of the day and
night as much as it does during normal business hours.27

Stolen Goods Buyers

In addition to professional fences, average citizens buy
stolen goods. At least in the United Kingdom, buying stolen goods, like many
other offenses, is a crime most often committed by those who are young, single,
male, relatively unskilled, and living in relatively deprived areas.28
These, of course, are simply those who are, overall, statistically the most
likely to be offered and to buy stolen goods. At any time, business owners who
are not professional fences may buy stolen goods. The same is true for tradespeople
and anyone else within any population of "ordinary folks" who find it hard to
resist the chance of a bargain with no questions asked.

Public Tolerance of Stolen Goods Markets

Whereas most citizens are intolerant of thieves and of
stealing, they tend to be more tolerant of stolen goods buyers and sellers
because they are seen as entrepreneurs providing the valuable local service of
making goods available at bargain prices.29
In addition, many so called "ordinary folks" ask no questions, or accept the
standard "it fell off a truck" lines, when offered deeply discounted valuables.
Even if they do not buy, most are unlikely to report people selling goods in
this way.30
Police cannot afford to ignore the prevailing community attitudes toward buying
stolen goods.31

Links With Illicit Drug Use

In the United Kingdom, some 29 percent of
arrested thieves are heroin or cocaine users, and these are the most prolific
offenders, probably responsible for more than three-fifths of the illegal
income generated by selling stolen goods.32
However, drug dealers are often reluctant to exchange drugs for stolen goods.33 This means that stolen
goods markets play at least as important a part as regular illegal hard drug
use in explaining high theft rates and, therefore, represent an equally important
opportunity for crime reduction initiatives. That said,
drug dealers do accept certain kinds of property in exchange for drugs, and they
also buy stolen property.34
Drug dealers are known to buy, in particular, stolen expensive designer wear
and jewelry for their own use.35
Buying and selling stolen goods is, for many offenders, a gateway offense into
buying and selling drugs.36

Stolen Goods Market Types

Stolen goods markets tend to have
particular local, as well as national, characteristics in terms of what thieves
steal and how those involved conduct transactions.37 Consequently, reducing
these markets calls for locally tailored solutions.

There are six stolen goods market types that are distinctive
in the ways that thieves, dealers, and consumers operate.38
No one market type is more serious or important than another in terms of the
role it plays in promoting theft. The six market types are as follows:

Network sales. Thieves pass stolen goods on, and each
participant adds a little to the price until a consumer is found. This may
involve a residential fence, and the buyer may be the final consumer or may
sell the goods on again through friendship networks.

Commercial sales. Commercial fences most usually pose openly
as legitimate business owners while secretly selling stolen goods for a profit,
either directly to the (innocent) consumer or, more rarely, to another
distributor who thinks he or she can resell the goods for additional profit.

Hawking. Thieves sell directly to consumers in
places such as bars and pubs or door to door (e.g., shoplifters sell
cigarettes, toiletries, clothes or food).

"eSelling." This market type involves selling stolen
goods through private websites such as Craigslist or through online auction
sites such as eBay. This gives thieves access to buyers they would not
otherwise reach. Thieves may sell goods directly to the public online or else
sell through a business fence in an offline commercial fence supplies market.
The business fence then sells the goods using the Internet.†

By
and large, offenders—particularly those operating within network sales markets—are
flexible in how they use available markets.

Sellers' Dilemmas

Understanding the dilemmas those dealing in
stolen goods face is useful in designing prevention and control strategies.

The stolen goods seller's dilemma is that
to increase his chances of making a profit, he has to increase his risks of
getting caught. The seller can choose to sell only to people he knows, which
reduces his risks of getting ripped off or detected but restricts his sales and
buying opportunities. Or the seller can sell to strangers, which allows him access
to more potential customers but also increases his chances of getting arrested
or ripped off.39
This dilemma applies to both the thief and the dealer (the fence), but the
business-owning commercial fence also has to simultaneously gain the confidence
of thieves with whom they deal, while maintaining a clean public image.40

These conflicting demands of access and
security determine to a large extent the structure of local stolen goods markets.

Fences

Some stolen goods dealers are professional fences who
conceal their activities behind legitimate business fronts. Others are not, but
operate instead out of their own homes or else on the move, using, for example,
networks of associates linked by mobile phone. In other markets, consumers and
innocent dealers may buy directly from thieves rather than through a fence.

Fences tend to specialize in selling in particular
market types, but some sell in more than one market type. For example, fences
operating in commercial fence supplies markets may deal at home as residential fences,
but also be involved in network sales41or
even "eSelling," particularly where stolen items not sold through their
legitimate retail business are being traded.

There are several types of fences,
including the following very useful typology constructed by Lewis (2006) to
outline the specific dynamics of different types of commercial fencing
operations:

Level-1 fence: A thief sells to a level-1 fence (often a
storeowner such as a pawnbroker or jeweler), who then sells the goods in his
store or else sells them to another fence.

Level-2 (wholesale) fence:A level-2 fence buys from a level-1
fenceand then often cleans up and/or repackages the goods to make it
look as though they came legitimately from the manufacturer. These are very
clandestine operations that are perhaps most likely to be found when working
back from a level-3 fence bust (see below). Those who operate stolen car rings also
fall within this fencing subtype.

Level-3 fence: A level-3 fence takes repackaged goods
from level-2 wholesale fences and diverts the goods to retailers. At times,
major retailers will find themselves buying back the very goods that were
stolen from them.42
Level-3 fences have been known to sell perfume, cosmetics, razor blades and shoplifted
designer goods in this way.43

Commercial fences use their business front
to recruit thieves who come in offering them stolen goods. (This is the
commercial fence supplies market operating at Level-1.) They also mix stolen
goods in with their legitimate stock. Somewhat perversely, this helps to sell
legitimate stock, as people think they are getting a genuine bargain if goods
are stolen, even when they are not. (This is the commercial sales market at
Level-1.)44

Most-Basic Fencing Principles

Understanding the unique dynamics of particular offending can help
identify and also understand the behavior of less visible offenses and
offenders that facilitate more visible crime problems such as theft. For a
professional fence to operate and avoid arrest, he needs to coach promising
thieves to avoid detection and maximize profits. He must conceal his stolen
goods trading behind a legitimate trading front. He should remain willfully
ignorant about whether the goods that he buys from other dealers are stolen. He
must try to offload stolen goods quickly to avoid detection, but also know when
it is safer to store them and sell them later. He must avoid getting caught in
possession of stolen goods, but if he is, he should know how to make it
difficult for police to prove that he knows the goods are stolen. He must be
careful not to work with police informants and limit the number of people who
know about his business. He must never admit to knowingly trading in stolen
goods if the police question him. And, if all this fails, he must have money for
a good lawyer if police arrest him.45

Operation Methods

Inexperienced thieves tend to sell mostly
by hawking to strangers in public places or selling to only one residential
fence they know.46
Problem drug users in particular commonly find it hard to find fences who will deal
with them.47
The most experienced and prolific offenders tend to have the most ways of
selling stolen goods in a variety of markets.48
A study of experienced residential burglars found that they most often sold
stolen goods to known fences, friends, or relatives rather than strangers.49

Understanding Your Local Problem

All the information provided above constitutes only a
generalized description of stolen goods markets. You must combine the basic
facts with a more specific understanding of your local problem. Analyzing the
local problem carefully will help you design a more effective response
strategy.

To understand the dynamics of the stolen goods markets in
your own area, interview known offenders and informants.†
It is important to talk with those who steal, sell, deal, and use stolen
property, as well as those who might know about them. See Appendix B for a
sample offender interview relating to stolen goods markets. You should routinely
solicit the following groups for information:

You should also ensure that the general public can easily
and confidentially report suspicious activity related to stolen goods to the
police.50

Evaluation of the Market Reduction Approach in England found
that reviewing old case files and interviewing officers in the field can also
reveal intelligence about offenders and fencing hot spots.51, ††

†† You can analyze qualitative data
about stolen goods market locations
and operators using qualitative
research software.

Where possible, you should analyze at least a few years'
worth of such data, because this will reduce the likelihood of making strategic
decisions based on temporary and uncharacteristic data peaks or troughs.52
In addition, you should analyze crime location data for fencing incidents using
crime pattern analysis techniques on geographic information system software.

The importance of both quantitative and qualitative analysis
of the kind recommended here cannot be overstressed if scarce resources are to
be best deployed where they are most likely to be effective. And the SARA model
of problem solving (Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment) should be used
in order to reach the right solution to your particular theft problem.

The kind of research outlined above may not be possible for
police officers facing competing demands for their time. This particular expertise/time
not available risk factor should be analyzed very early on in the planning
and design of your stolen goods market reduction initiative. Possible solutions
to this, if it is a foreseeable problem, may be to work in formal partnership
with freelance academics or some other kind of crime analysis unit such as in
university, police or government departments.

The best solution to a local stolen goods problem may not be
the most immediately feasible and intuitive one, but may instead come as a
unique breakthrough borne of complex and painstaking analysis.

Stakeholders

In addition to local criminal justice agencies, the
following groups have an interest in the stolen goods trading problem, and you should
consider the contribution they might make to gathering information about the
problem and responding to it:

Business associations (e.g., representing retail
merchants, bars, scrap dealers) have an interest in preventing merchants who
trade in stolen goods from undercutting legitimate merchants' market share and
may know which merchants are suspected to be trading in such goods.

Retail loss prevention professionals have an interest in
reducing losses from diversions of legitimately purchased wholesale merchandise
into the illegitimate stolen goods markets.

Crime reporting hotlines (e.g., Crime Stoppers) may have
information on particular suspected thieves and fences, as well as emerging
trends.

Internet governance and crime-reporting clearinghouses.†††

Tax authorities are interested in stemming lost tax
revenue attributable to stolen-goods trading and may have information about
suspicious business enterprises.

Asking the Right Questions

The following are some critical questions you should ask in
analyzing your particular stolen goods markets problem, even if the answers are
not always readily available. Your answers to these and other questions will
help you choose the most appropriate set of responses later on. Some of these
questions can be answered only through in-depth interviews with thieves. It is
important to note that these questions should be asked before new anti-fencing initiatives
begin and then again once they have had a chance to bite. By way of example,
after an anti-fencing initiative, any recorded falls in theft, accompanied by
(1) a decrease in perceptions of ease of selling and buying among offenders (2)
and/or increases in risks and decreases in the perception of the rewards of
selling and buying stolen goods, would indicate that it is the police
operations that have had the desired effect on falling theft levels rather than
some other cause. Such measures are most important in finding out what works in
reducing stolen goods markets and when seeking to attribute causes to falling theft
figures. Similarly, such qualitative data may also explain increases in theft
levels if offenders reveal the existence of new buoyant markets for stolen
goods.

Stolen Goods Markets

How much stolen goods trading is occurring in your jurisdiction?
(Remember that official police recorded crime data are of little help here
since the public rarely report such offenses, and many receiving-stolen-goods
cases are actually cases in which thieves have pled guilty to a lesser charge
when evidence of the original theft is weak.53).
Therefore, qualitative data of the kind recommended in the Understanding Your
Local Problem section above are invaluable.

What types of stolen goods markets are dealing in particular
types of stolen goods?

Are certain types of markets shrinking or even shutting down? Are
new types of markets emerging?

Where are the markets for particular types of stolen goods?

What is the typical discount rate for stolen goods? Is this
increasing or decreasing?

What proportion of goods stolen in your jurisdiction do you
estimate are then sold in stolen goods markets, as opposed to being used by the
thief, recovered by police, or discarded?

How easy and quick is it for thieves to find a buyer for
their stolen goods?

How easy and quick is it for fences to find a buyer for
their stolen goods?

How do thieves transport stolen goods to fences?

What do thieves typically do with property immediately after
stealing it (e.g., sell it or trade it immediately on the street, hide it while
searching for a buyer, sell it immediately to a pawnshop or fence)?

How often do thieves need to dump goods that they could sell?

Offenders

Thieves

Who deals in particular types of stolen goods, which markets are
they dealing in, and how?

What do thieves perceive to be the risks of selling stolen
goods?

What do thieves perceive to be the rewards of selling
stolen goods?

How do thieves avoid being detected when selling stolen goods?

How do thieves learn where to sell stolen goods?

How safe do thieves feel transporting and stashing stolen goods?

How safe do thieves feel when dealing with a fence?

How concerned are thieves about getting caught?

How much do thieves know about police operations against stolen
goods dealing?

Fences

Who are the fences (e.g., professional, quasi-legitimate
merchants)?

What do fences perceive to be the risks of buying stolen
goods?

What do fences perceive to be the rewards of buying stolen
goods?

Consumers

Who in your jurisdiction tends to buy property that they know or
should suspect is stolen?

What do consumers of stolen goods perceive to be the current risks
of buying them?

What do consumers of stolen goods perceive to be the currentrewards of buying them?

Targets

What types of goods are commonly being sold in stolen goods
markets? Which types of targeted goods are newly popular? (Monitoring
international, national, and local changes in the supply, demand, and price of certain
goods and commodities can help you anticipate new theft and stolen goods
trading problems. For example, global shortages of various metals have preceded
surges in metal theft many times in the past.†).
Simply keeping an eye on newspaper and other news items may reveal trends in
this area. For example, a surge in reporting of strange thefts of cast iron
road and side-walk drain covers, large bronze sculptures, metal road signs and
copper wiring from electricity sub-stations and railway sidings are all
examples of the upsurge in scrap metal theft caused by global shortages at the
time of writing. Police agencies without resources for monitoring such factors might
form useful collaborative research partnerships with university departments specializing
in the effect of market trends upon crime, or those with an interest in
developing such expertise.

† See Problem-Specific Guide No. 58, Theft
of Scrap Metal, for further information.

Locations and Times

Where are the fencing operations located within your
jurisdiction?

Are there seasonal variations in the types of goods traded in
stolen goods markets (e.g., snowblowers in winter, lawn mowers in summer,
stereo equipment and laptop computers at the beginning of universities'
academic years, textbooks at the beginning of semesters and just before exam periods)?

Tips for Understanding Local Stolen Goods Markets

Interview a sample of people who work in the wholesale and retail
goods sectors. Without talking about crime, find out how and why goods are
rejected by or shipped away from the retail stores that originally bought them,
and where they end up.

Conducting representative surveys of theft victims
and of the general public at the county, city or town level is expensive, is time-consuming,
and due to the specific characteristics of local crime problems offers little
useful information for local initiatives.

†† These tips are modified from Felson
(2002).

Measuring Your Effectiveness

Measurement allows you to determine to what degree your
efforts have succeeded, and suggests how you might modify your responses if
they are not producing the intended results. You should take measures of your crime
problem before you implement responses, to determine how serious the
problem is, and after you implement them, to determine whether they have
been effective. You should take all measures in both the target area and the
surrounding area. A longer time frame is usually necessary for
measuring the impact of responses to stolen goods markets.54 For more-detailed
guidance on measuring effectiveness, see Problem-Solving Tools Guide No. 1, AssessingResponses to Problems: An Introductory Guide for Police Problem-Solvers.

Although seeking to reduce theft, burglary, and robbery by reducing
the stolen goods markets that motivate thieves is a simple and compellingly
logical idea, the reality is more complex. Stolen goods markets are remarkably
adaptable to efforts to close them down. Goals are often difficult to achieve,
and even if positive results are achieved, they can be hard to measure with
certainty.55
It is important therefore to set achievable, measurable goals.

The following are potentially useful measures of the
effectiveness of responses to stolen goods markets. These measures are divided
into two groups: those that measure the impact on the problem (outcome
measures), and those that measure your agency's responses to the problem (process
measures).

Process Measures

Responses to the Problem of Stolen Goods Markets

Your analysis of your particular stolen goods problem should
give you a better understanding of the factors contributing to it. Once you
have analyzed your problem and established a baseline for measuring
effectiveness, you should next consider possible responses to address it.

The following response strategies provide a pool of
promising ideas for addressing your particular theft and stolen goods market
problem. The strategies summarized in Appendix A and those outlined in more
detail here are drawn from a variety of research studies and police reports.
Several of these strategies may apply to your community's problem. For example,
it is critical that you tailor responses to local circumstances, and that you
can justify each response based on reliable local analysis and wider research
knowledge. In most cases, an effective strategy will involve implementing
several different responses. Law enforcement responses alone are seldom
effective in reducing or solving the problem. Do not limit yourself to
considering what police can do: consider also whether others in your community
share responsibility for the problem and can help police better respond to it.
In some cases, you may need to shift the responsibility of responding toward
those who can implement more-effective responses. (For more-detailed
information on shifting and sharing responsibility, see Response Guide No. 3, Shifting and Sharing Responsibility for Public Safety Problems.)

General Considerations for an Effective Response Strategy

1.Adopting a comprehensive approach to stolen goods markets.
A comprehensive approach to policing stolen goods that is occurring in the U.K. known as the Market Reduction Approach,56
addresses both supply and demand for stolen goods, and addresses the offenders
who actively participate in stolen goods markets, the people who facilitate
stolen goods markets, and the places and networks in which stolen goods markets
occur.

2.Establishing and sustaining multiagency partnerships.
The police working alone will be less effective than those working with
agencies that can bring into play other intelligence, regulatory authority, and
capacity to affect business practices. A working group comprising partner
agency representatives from diverse areas such as retail loss prevention,
revenue, business licensing, environment and trading standards can coordinate a
large initiative and keep it on track. Particularly important is facilitating local
prosecutors' active involvement at your initiative's planning and development
stage so that police enforcement efforts achieve their maximum effect.57
Adopting a written interagency data-sharing protocol at an early stage of the
partnership can make future analyses and operations run more smoothly.58

3.Improving investigations of stolen goods markets. Although
this guide does not focus on crime investigation methods, improving your
agency's capacity to investigate theft, burglary, robbery and stolen-goods
trading cases can be important to overall control of stolen goods markets. The
following suggestions for improving criminal investigations relate to stolen
goods markets:

Consider setting up a specialized stolen goods market
investigative unit. Specialized investigators can develop the necessary
criminal intelligence, expertise, and resources to acquire evidence necessary
to arrest and prosecute professional fences. Such specialization is obviously
not feasible for smaller police agencies but might nonetheless be possible
through joint agency task forces. Take care to guard against stolen goods
investigators' being diverted to investigations and activities
unrelated to stolen goods markets.59

Avoid enlisting known fences as confidential informants
because fences recruit and encourage local thieves to steal more frequently.60

Apply for warrants to search the homes of those
arrested for theft, burglary, or robbery for stashed stolen property. If the
arrested person is on probation or parole, the supervising agent may be able to
authorize or conduct such a search.

Encourage police officers to routinely ask thieves where they
sell stolen goods. While most will be reluctant to divulge such information,
some will reveal at least some of the ways they sell stolen goods.

Enlist technology for investigative purposes. Trying
to identify thieves and fences by investigating suspicious classified ads is
resource-intensive and seldom productive.61
On the other hand, searching Internet-based goods markets (such as eBay
or Craigslist) and doing automated pawnshop record searches to seek out
specific known stolen goods offered for sale are more efficient approaches and
likely to be more productive.62

Encourage neighborhood groups to report suspicious local trading activities,
for example, and consider setting up or using existing crime-reporting hotlines,
offering rewards for information leading to the conviction of those buying and
selling stolen goods.

Specific Responses To Reduce Stolen Goods Markets

4.Regulating and inspecting pawn- and secondhand shops. Police
and other relevant officials should routinely visit and inspect pawn- and
secondhand shops to encourage compliance with laws designed to inhibit stolen
goods markets.63
Local statutes and ordinances might be drafted to require pawn- and secondhand
shops to submit transaction records to police daily and, ideally, in an
electronic format that police can automatically compare against police reports about
stolen goods.†

Statutes and ordinances that regulate how pawnbrokers and
secondhand dealers††
conduct business can make it more difficult for thieves to sell them stolen
goods.64
At a minimum, such laws should require pawnbrokers and secondhand dealers to conduct
all in-shop purchases on camera in public areas of their businesses, retain
these CCTV recordings for at least three months and make them available to
police on request, and demand and record valid proof of identification from
sellers and maintain transaction records that are open to police inspection.65,
†††
Other laws should ban people from reselling merchandise door to door, at least
without having a proper business license.

†† The term "secondhand dealers" is intended to include such operations as antique shops, flea markets and "swap shops" (Newfoundland and Labrador Government, 2006), and consignment stores. Not all such operations call for identical regulations, but local analysis should indicate which operations are prone to trading in stolen goods.

5.Conducting reverse-sting operations. Rather than set
up conventional fencing sting operations, conduct reverse-sting operations that
entail police officers' posing as thieves selling stolen goods to fences,66
or else use known thieves who agree to wear a wire when selling to a fence.67
Unlike antifencing sting operations in which police buy stolen goods, reverse
stings are both more likely to be effective and less likely to backfire by
promoting more theft.68

6.Conducting publicity campaigns to discourage buying
suspected stolen goods. Publicity campaigns to discourage citizens from
buying what they should suspect are stolen goods are intended to reduce the
demand for stolen goods that drives many theft problems.

You should carefully design and pretest publicity
campaigns-including those involving TV, radio, print media, posters and
stickers, leaflets or the Internet-to ensure that you're changing attitudes in
the intended, rather than the opposite, direction. What works in the use of
media to change attitudes is complex and likely to be counterintuitive.69 Attempts to convince
the public not to buy stolen goods may actually backfire and make the problem
worse.70,
†

Even well-designed and well-implemented publicity
campaigns to discourage participation in stolen goods markets will not solely suffice
to address the problem, but rather must be done in combination with other
responses that disrupt and reduce the markets.

7.Encouraging those who facilitate stolen goods markets to
report thieves and fences. Encourage people who are in the position to
learn who is stealing and selling stolen property-for example, taxi drivers,
bartenders and liquor merchants, barbers and offenders apprehended on other
charges-to report thieves' and fences' identities. You might need to offer them
cash or other incentives for this information. Take care, however, not to leave
them vulnerable to intimidation or retaliation from those whom
they report.††

Encouraging the general public to report incidents in which
people approach them on the street or at their homes, offering to sell them
deeply discounted goods, can lead to arrests of those selling stolen goods.71

A word of caution: Be wary of driving
stolen goods markets deeper underground. Assess the possible unintended
consequences of cracking down too hard on stolen goods markets if it means that
those buying stolen goods get deterred from seeking police assistance or
cooperating in investigations of more-serious crimes.

†† Evaluation of the Market Reduction Approach in England (Hale et. al., 2004) found that taxi drivers and bar owners may be particularly reluctant to report those selling stolen goods because they feel intimated by such criminal customers. What this research reveals is that any initiatives seeking to routinely gather intelligence from such sources will need to satisfactorily reassure potential informants that their confidentiality and safety has been given primary rather than secondary priority.

8.Closing down fencing operations. In addition to using
criminal law, explore enforcing civil laws such as those that govern taxes,
fire safety, public health, building structures and maintenance, nuisances, business
licenses or zoning to compel property owners to either cease fencing operations
or close the operations entirely. Under some circumstances, you might also be
able to enforce criminal and civil statutes relating to organized criminal
enterprises, such as the U.S. federal Racketeering-Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations (RICO) statutes or equivalent state laws.

9.Seizing assets connected to stolen goods markets. If
you succeed in building a criminal case against a fencing operation, you should
explore the feasibility of also seeking the seizure and forfeiture of assets
linked to the criminal enterprise.†††

Responses With Limited Effectiveness

10.Improving systems for disposing of recovered stolen goods.
Police agencies recover and store large amounts of property, some of which
is known to be stolen; some suspected, but not proved, to be stolen; and some
not even reported as stolen. Although returning stolen property to its rightful
owner does little to reduce theft or control stolen goods markets, it
nonetheless can improve victims' satisfaction with police service and help
reduce the often large property inventories in police custody.

Historically, police efforts to link recovered property to
reported thefts and to rightful owners has been difficult and time-consuming.72
There is some promise that modern information technology can make these efforts
more efficient. New police property-tracking software programs and
Internet-based property-tracking systems can make it easier to link recovered
property to reported thefts and to rightful owners.

When police agencies can't link recovered property to its
rightful owners, they often seek to return that property to the local community
via charitable donations or auctions. This is especially common with recovered
bicycles.†
The merits of such initiatives are beyond the scope of this guide, but a couple
of words of caution are in order: some recovered goods might
no longer be safe or desirable for consumers, and local businesses that sell
the same goods the police are giving away or selling might lose sales for those
goods.

Sting operations have been one of the predominant responses
police have used to address stolen goods markets. Many such
antifencing operations have focused on commercial fences.74 These tend to be
short-term operations in response to theft sprees.

The majority of the best available research strongly
suggests that you should avoid police storefront antifencing stings because
they require huge amounts of resources and do more harm than good.75
Stolen goods sting operations can have the unintended effect of encouraging
more theft in the area to meet the perceived new demand.76,
††
Moreover, they often provide an infusion of cash that winds up in local illegal drug markets. When a new fencing sting
operation opens in an area, unsuspecting thieves might prefer to sell there
because of the convenient location (the farther thieves have to transport
stolen goods, the greater the chance of getting caught).77
In addition, if the sting operators offer what thieves perceive to be good or
fair prices, they might be induced to commit more thefts to boost their income.78

Reports of successful sting operations often fail to fully
examine the wider harm they cause79
and are often little more than self-promotional how-to manuals.80

12.Promoting property-marking schemes. Property-marking has never been proved to reduce theft largely because
thieves will steal marked property and fences and citizens will buy it. Despite
the sometimes bold assertions commercial companies make about their property-marking
products' success, and despite the fact that property-marking is relatively
easy to do, independent academic research concludes that property-marking does
not reduce theft.81
Property-marking remains a favored police response to theft, and police
officers often justify it on the grounds that it is good for public relations
and helps in property recovery. However, even this is completely unfounded, and
such property-recovery schemes can easily consume entire budgets set aside for
targeted crime reduction, while being completely ineffective at returning
property.82

Appendix: Sample Stolen Goods Market Offender Interview

The following questions can be asked in the present, rather
than the past tense, if interviews are conducted by a skilled social scientist
questioning active offenders while offering the interviewees full ethical
assurances of anonymity. English constabularies using the Market Reduction
Approach employed outside academic consultants to interview offenders in
Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire83,
Operation Radium in Kent84
and the We Don't Buy Crime initiative in West Mercia85.
Police officers and other police employees may not be in a position to offer the
same assurances of confidentiality.

1. What sentence did you receive for your last theft offense?

2. What kind of things did you steal?

3. From where did you steal?

4. How often did you steal?

5. How did you decide what to steal?

6. Did you know what you were going to do with the items
before you stole them?

7. What did you do with what you stole?

Take the buyer to the goods?

Take the goods to the buyer?

Take the goods onto the street,
looking for buyers?

Use a mobile phone to find buyers?

Take the goods to a friend who
knows buyers?

8. How did you know to whom/where to sell?

9. Why was it easier to sell to that person/place?

10. How did you learn the best ways to sell stolen goods?

11. Where did you (and others) sell the following types of
stolen goods?

14. Did people buy stolen goods without asking any questions
about where they came from or proof of identity?

15. Do you think the shopkeepers knew the goods you were
selling were stolen?

16. How easy was it to sell each type of stolen goods?

17. Did police ever catch your fence/dealer?

18. Did you ever need to dump goods?

19. How did you know where to take stolen property?

20. How long did it take you to get rid of property?

21. If you had to store/stash goods, where did you do that?

Own home?

Friend's/relative's/partner's house?

Vehicle?

Lockups?

Empty houses?

22. How did you transport what you stole?

Car?

Public transportation?

On foot?

Bicycle?

23. Did you ever swap stolen goods for drugs? Or trade
stolen goods for anything else?

24. Did you work alone or with someone else?

25. Did you earn money from selling stolen goods shared with
someone?

26. Did anyone ever ask you to steal to order? What sort of
property?

27. Did you ever ask someone else to sell something for you?
Who (don't need to know names)? What sort of property?

28. What did you do with any money you got from what you stole?

29. Why did you steal and sell stolen goods?

For cash to party (alcohol, drugs, prostitution)?

To support other people?

For fun and excitement?

To support a drug, alcohol, gambling, or other
addiction?

30. What did community members think of buying stolen goods?
Did they ask? Did they turn a "blind eye"?

31. Were you aware of the police when you were stealing or
selling stolen goods? Did you take precautions not to get caught?

32. Did you have any strategies to ensure that buyers were
not going to inform police?

33. What did you know about police operations against
thieves and dealers?

34. How concerned were you about your chances of getting
caught?

35. How long did it typically take you to sell your stolen goods?

36. Were or are you aware of any markets closing down as a
result of police intervention?

37. Were or are you aware of any increased police interest
in where stolen property was or is sold?

38. Did property-marking deter you from stealing? Were there
particular types of marking that deterred you more than others?

39. Did you get a good return for the goods you sold?

40. Did prices for particular goods go up? If so, did that
affect what you stole?

41. Did prices for particular goods go down? Did that stop
you from stealing such things?

42. What do you think affected/affects price changes?

The market got/gets swamped with stolen stuff?

Street prices went/go down?

Fashions changed/change?

Prospective thieves feared/fear detection?

43. Are there any goods that you used to steal, but no
longer would? If so, why?

Summary of Responses to Stolen Goods Markets

The table below summarizes the responses to stolen goods markets, the means by which they are intended to work, the conditions under which they should work best, and some factors you should
consider before implementing a particular response. It is critical that you tailor responses to local circumstances, and that you can justify each response based on reliable analysis. In most cases, an effective strategy will involve implementing several different responses. Law enforcement responses alone are seldom effective in reducing or solving the problem.

It may require new legislative action requiring careful police justification; it may require merchants to buy new computerized records and data sharing systems; it may require additional police investigative resources

Cotter, C., and J. Burrows (1981). Property Crime Program: A Special Report Overview of the Sting Program and Project Summaries. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration.

Knuttson, J. (1984). Operation Identification: A Way to Prevent Burglaries? National Swedish Council for Crime Prevention, Research Division Report No 14. Stockholm: The National Swedish Council for Crime Prevention.

Nahmias, D. (2006). "Store Owners Charged With Buying and Shipping Stolen Infant Formula and Other Goods for Resale in New York." News Release, October 27, U.S. Department of Justice, Northern District of Georgia.

-------- (1996). "The Black Economy Boom: Handlers Play a Big Role in Criminal
Activity but Current Performance Indicators Mean Little Is Being Done To Target
Those Involved in the Market for Stolen Goods." Police Review (December
13):14-16.

Stevenson, R., and L. Forsythe (1998). The Stolen Goods Market in New South Wales: An Interview Study With Imprisoned Burglars. Sydney: New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. [Full Text]

Wright, T., and S. Decker (1994). Burglars on the Job: Street Life and Residential Break-Ins. Boston: Northeastern University Press.

Related POP Projects

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